Informe de Machado y la discusión posterior del informe 1929 11 00 for our purpose, because it had arrived a few hours before and was still under pressure.
Inasmuch as we had rifles for only 250 men, and so little ammunition (about 1500 rounds. only that number of workers went to Venezuela. We took along with us the Military Governor and the Captain of Police, with 60 to 80 Dutch policemen, who were very useful when we disembarked in Venezuela. We took from jail the murderer of our Comrade Hilario Montenegro, and took him along with us to make him pay for his crime. We did not know that the Captain of Police was the well known Tiger of Amsterdam. assassin of thousands of workers in Indonesia; he owes his life to our ignorance. If we had found sufficient ammunition we could have taken along to Venezuela several thousand workers who were anxious to participate in the movement, and certainly today, the actual agent of imperialism would not be in power any more.
Before embarking, already realized the robable military failure due to the little ammunition we had, but to remain in Curaçao was impossible, and to have delayed the revolt would have meant the unfruitful sacrifice of our best comrades. We landed near the town of Vela de Coro, on the morning of the 9th of June, 1929, and two hours after fought and defeated the Federal troops commanded by General Lacle, in charge of the Presidency of the State of Falcon. We could not follow our success and take the city of Coro because of our lack of ammunition. We held off the government during 20 days, having fought four times, and, although every time we defeated the Federals, we could not obtain their ammunition because the tactic of Gomez is to send soldiers to fight with a maximum of 60 shots per head witho ut any ammunition reserves, replacing the Federal soldiers without any more ammunition by others with the ordinary armament.
When we had no more ammunition we were compelled to flee and disperse our forces, distributing our men in several plantations and small villages in the mountains where they had to hide for a time. General Urbina Colonel Olegario Reyes, second in command, and myself, active as Chief of Staff, remained alone and compelled to change our hiding place continu ally.
The Government had more than 1, 000 men on our tracks. remained four months in the mountains of Falcon. Although the difficulties that we encountered were great, we, the mem bers of the devoted as much time as the circumstances permitted to propagandise the revolution amongst the peons of that agricultural region.
It is important for us to know the mentality of the Venezuelan peon in